because i can’t really rant about this to my child…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I just got through a ‘live chat’ with a customer service rep from the bank that suddenly owns our car loan.  Our car loan was going very well with a bank located in New Jersey, no complaints.  Now the loan is owned by a bank in Spain.  I got the bill YESTERDAY.  It is due TOMORROW.  Our old payment books will not be honored.  Also?  NO MORE GRACE PERIODS.  So… uhm, If my payment is not processed suddenly tomorrow, on its new due date… uhm, I get a late fee and a ding and all of that garbage.

I have worked many jobs, I know what it is like to be that schmuck on the other end… but it seemed to me they were being insulated from the (justifiable) wrath of their newly acquired customers.  CHat?  I tried the phone but was on hold forever.
The person on the other end of the chat kept typing “No grace period, no due date changes, no exceptions”.  I took an extra second of my date to say “Thanks for getting back to me but has it occurred to you that none of us have done anything to deserve this sort of abuse?”  Next answer from “Marcus”: “I can give you a pay off price” and then, once more, “No grace period, no due date changes, no exceptions.”  Screw you, “Marcus”.  Its got to be some sort of acronym or something MARCUS… hmm. Manbot.

So lets move on to our credit cards.   We are great customers.  We use our cards, pay our cards, everything always on time… Last month I panicked when I found our payments changed and our terms changed!  ????  According to the pleasant East Indian man on the phone we had been mailed.  Oh yeah, the mail?  Do you know how much mail from credit card companies we get?  Probably about five a day a few times a week.  I did not say anything to this gentleman since I was happy to actually be talking to a person and given an actual answer.  I meet some of these outsourced work employees as they train (they stay at the hotel I work at sometimes) and I have nothing against them.  I don’t like that everything that can be outsourced is outsourced, but again, they need jobs like we need jobs.  The voice on the phone is just another human being who needs to work as much as I do (if not more).

BUT COME ON.

So now our credit card payments are higher, though we have never made a late payment.  Our terms went from wonderful to crappy without a slacking on our part.  Our car loan belongs to some bank in Spain that doesn’t care about reasonable due date expectations.

Remember how we got cable?  Just basic channels, right?  Well one night we happened to be awake at three in the morning watching something.  The television started to go nuts and soon we found that our stations had changed.  Watchable channels replaced with MORE HOME SHOPPING, THE CATHOLIC CHANNEL, and LOTS OF LOCAL CHANNELS THAT ONLY PLAY INFORMERCIALS.  What the hell?  If we got the converter box we would get nothing because even though we live IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR STATE’S ONLY CITY we get no channels clearly.

We don’t need television.  We don’t.  We pretty much only watch PBS and C-Span.  That sort of stuff we can get other places.

Do we need the credit cards?  I would say so.  If we have nothing to buffer each month it gets a little scary.

We pay soooo much more every month for the same or less quality of life.  It makes me feel hateful, spiteful.  We try so hard.
I feel like we should be able to survive on an income and a half because:

-we eat in and cheaply.  I spend about 35 per person, per week, on groceries.

-I mend our old crappy clothes.  We shop at Goodwill and online for cheap socks and underwear.

-I said 1.5 incomes— I don’t work full time.  I figure the other half of the work week I don’t work is about equal to what I would pay for child care. We don’t have pre-k here.  We have costly child care programs with fancy names and long wait lists.  My child is getting a lot from me at this point so until he meets the age requirements for public school he gets me.

-we live in a small apartment and have almost no furniture

-we only drive our one fuel efficient car to work and do almost everything else on foot

-we pretty much read or run around outside for all of our entertainment.  Our local museum is free on Friday nights.

-we don’t get sick! (well, now I am sick, and that will cost us)

I would like to know a little more about the day to day lives of those people who decide to change the terms and APR of people who pay on time?  What do they eat?  What about the banks who decide against grace periods and hike up late fees?  Where do their decision makers buy their clothes?

Who let all of these people somehow own so much of our lives?

overnight with a sad-sack

Staying up all night when one is in a kind of miserable mood is not advise-able.  I truly tried to make the best of it.

Things I thought about today:

-The letter I got in the mail from my insurance company informing me that the surgery I am having is a lot more dangerous than my doctor let on

-two separations: one on both sides (my side, my husband’s side) of our family… not just the immediate issues involved: I keep feeling sad at the notion that we may be loosing two family members- sort of the same way I lose friends to this big abyss (only to re-surface later on Facebook) I started crying today when I heard that my son and his uncle had the same shoes on.

-Oh yeah, I haven’t had much sleep

-the fact that my brother got out of surgery alone this week (yes, brother and I both have broken insides at the same time.  He has an umbilical hernia) when I was perfectly free to drive him to and from… Why didn’t I think of it at the time?

-money

-it still bugs me that someone in our family was murdered.  I mean- it sort of casts a weird shadow over a period of time

-last year at this time my grandmother passed away sort of unexpectedly and I could not get to the funeral.  I think about that a lot.  She passed away the week before our annual visit.

SO. so.  so.

I stood around talking to a Chinese food delivery guy.  I talk to him every weekend.  He takes solace in our lobby after driving around in the rain delivering to scary places across town where he walks in on drug packaging, porn filming, child abuse… nothing to see here but weary business travelers and families with cranky, over-travelled kids.  Not exactly dangerous- anyway- I like hearing his stories.

I need to perk up!

It is raining and this might actually work out for me.  It will force my guys to stay inside when I am too tired to go out and about with them.  I envision this day of cuddling and movie or bad television watching.  Scratch the television watching thing.  My son does not let us watch television anymore.  Strange, but true.   The only show he wholly endorses is Jeopardy.

I need a birthday party.  Too bad my birthday is in October. Too bad I can’t eat cake!  I need a really big cocktail and a hug.  I feel guilty saying this because i cannot justify hogging and hugs or cocktails when people I know are having worse days.

UG!

Oh well, back to work.   I guess I can look forward to talking to ‘drops of the newspapers guy’ or ‘cabbie that comes in for coffee before he takes guests to the airport guy’.  It is me, them, and the Chinese delivery guy. Yup.

something i like on sunday: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

I know I just said I was not really interested in this blog.  That was a few days ago, this is now.  Maybe each Sunday I will share something I really like.  I kind of like that idea.  I like to like.

I like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

I probably first heard his voice while watching Bandit Queen in the mid-nineties.  It caught my attention immediately- I don’t have to say much about it, actually— it is Sunday and I have not slept in a few days so just check out my clips:)

I love Taa Deem.  I love, love, love the album Star Rise and the ADF remix of ‘Taa Deem’.  Before I moved all of my music to mp3 format I went through two copies of that album.   Here is some guy playing his bass to it.  It was the best sounding clip of the song I could get on YouTube.

Here are two clips with songs from Night Song.  I listen to this album often around the house.  Something about it always alters my mood:

Here is an interesting music video I found:

and another:

Here is a link to the first part of a documentary  (in English):

sad that he passed on so young- here is a clip from his final concert:

There you have it: something I like very, very, very much.

Now sleep.

u p d a t i n g

I don’t feel like updating a blog these days!  I used to like to do it!

I am still alive, though.  I am sure I will enjoy writing stuff here again.

a list:

1. Right now I am ripping stuff from old cds to Itunes.  I like my old stuff.  I knew something was missing- like 3/4ths of my music collection that never made it to my itunes.  Sadness!

2. Ask me about #2 later.  Nothing too important just GAaaaaah.

3. My child (or ‘kid’- he informed me that would be his label now) is losing a fingernail after placing his finger in a hinge of a closing door for no logical reason whatsoever.

4. My husband is a non-smoker!  It is official!  Monday we celebrate his second milestone in the process!

5. We are going on vacation in a few weeks… woo!

That is all I have right now.  It is 7:15 a.m.  I have been up since 5.  Blah.

not real

I slept during the day today- between my shifts, as always.  I did not wake up at all, which is not as always.  Instead it seems like I was all wrapped up in the longest, strangest dream.  So real-seeming that I have to relate it here (or at least get it typed out for the sake of keeping it somehow):

I entered a new doctor’s address into my gps unit and navigated to a part of town I had never been to before.  The houses were huge and bizarre and so, uhm, original?  The house directly across from the office I was going into consisted of a huge facade: three story, 2-d art deco, held up with angled supports.  Doorway led straight through the 2-d facade and down to a staircase that descended underground, where the actual dwelling was.

The house I was entering was a huge mist/grey colored Victorian complete with little towers.  The inside was dusky?  That is the best word I have.  Sort of low light and airy?  Lots of lavender and gray colored curtains.  I entered a waiting room through a large coat room.  A very cute and cheerful looking red headed woman took my information and told me that they were very excited to have a new patient in their practice.  I was excited to be seeing a doctor in such a strangely relaxing atmosphere.  I was lead up three stories to a large room decorated with cushions, tapestries, and more lilac curtains and met with a very enthusiastic (and odd) doctor.

He started asking me some questions but then had to take a call.  It turned out he had to give another red head who worked in the office a ride.  He told me to tag along.  We squeezed into a pick-up cab: myself, the doctor, and the two bubbly red heads, and headed out into a snow storm listening to Stevie Nicks on the radio.

We stopped and talked to a group of women…. sort of like the other two women.  A transient/down on his luck type old man hobbled up and collapsed right in front of everyone.  I expected the doctor to help him but instead everyone was looking at me.  I had to give him CPR- I was yelling at everyone to help me keep time on the compressions and they simply would not help!  The man was re-animated (by me) just in time for an ambulance to arrive.  I was sort of upset that no one was saying anything about what had just happened… in fact I lost track of the entire group of people and was suddenly shopping for fresh herbs in a market with my sister.

My sister and I were looking through produce and I remembered that I had that doctor’s appointment that I really needed to get back to.  I found a group of men standing outside the market and asked one to give me a ride.  He agreed but wanted me to first admit that I was not the sort of person who would be considered ‘hot’ enough to get a ride from him, this was just some sort of extra kind favor on his part.  I told him that he was not the sort of person I would ever want a ride from, but I really needed it… then I was back at the doctor’s office.

I was back upstairs with the doctor and both of his red headed girlfriends (this now made sense at this point  in the dream).  They were smoking some sort of hookah and kept asking me the time.  We started to go over my medical history.  The doctor asked me questions like had I ever been in love? Did childbirth hurt? Was I afraid of dogs?  Suddenly there was a very large (but quiet and calm dog) in the room.  It was sort of violet-y gray like everything else.  I started to tell them (doctor, red heads, dog) about my family medical history, my side pains, as well as the general story of my life-  I kept trying to bring up the man that I saved and they kept telling me that it was nothing heroic, just the right thing to do.. and that I should be the one pointing that out to people instead of begging for compliments-

My alarm went off and I was suddenly really confused by the urgency to get the doctor to hear me out.

internally challenged

I mean that literally.  It seems the next couple of months will involve the possible removal of an organ or two and other sorts of medical fun.  A high tolerance to pain is not always a good thing.  I have advice to give: If you wake up at night in a cold sweat and feel your insides are burning, call the doctor for goodness sake.  That is not what I did, though it is what I would have recommended to anyone else.

Other things on the horizon:  a few small trips to visit family balanced with some extra work hours I am trying to pick up. My mother is not doing awesomely well.  It seems that she must stop working short of retirement. 

My husband is quitting smoking.  Eeek!  I am happy and scared at the same time.  He is a pleasant person but like me he is a bit intense.  Put it this way: we have both managed to crack the same tooth from years of clenching.  We both obsess, pace…  I am thinking of just providing him with an endless supply of treats to put in his mouth.  We can’t really afford to buy him a new wardrobe, really, but I would rather have him plump and living with a lower risk of lung disease.  He might look cute with a little extra something on him.  I mean, I can’t imagine it ever bothering me and maybe store clerks would stop flirting with him.

Speaking of the man: I am planning a mega night out.  I don’t know quite what to do yet.  Seems like there have to be some good possibilities in the city voted America’s most live-able city by Forbes… right???  As I see it: we have not spent any money on ourselves nor any time alone.  We are spending all of our paid time off this year visitting family members and getting medical attention.  We parent the hell out of our child and I think even he is demanding we leave him alone (for happy fun with his aunt) for one evening.  It seems we have one small window to live it up a little.  Pressure, though.  If you knew you could have one night of fun what would you do? I love movies, but sitting in the dark seems a bit too much like something we could do at home for a lot less money.  Hmmm.  Ideas? Ideas?

I probably won’t be posting here very much in the near future, which is sort of unfortunate.  My son and I always have these great ideas for videos and podcasts but the reality of life is the work, sleep, feel like garbage, help other people out, boil lentils, sit by the bathroom to enforce potty usage continuum.   I keep thinking that in a couple of months everything will be a little different.  If anyone would like to donate a large sum of cash to free up a little of our time for creative output please contact me.
ha!  If you would like to give me cash in return for an organ I will save something for you!  Is it illegal to sell crappy pieces of oneself that do not work if the receiving party is well aware?

too windy to think

and the fluorescent light in the kitchen is making me batty.
I did  not know that we had a fluorescent light in the kitchen until I spent about half an hour trying to establish if I am not as sane as I claim to be.  I called my sister and asked if her power was flickering.  I yelled through the bathroom door and asked my husband (mid shower) if the power was flashing in the bathroom.  I turned off everything in the house (except for the kitchen light) and then started asking if anyone else heard a strange high-pitch flickering.  I got nervous as my husband turned on the iron and then he asked me if I had any recollection of the fact that three years ago we had replaced the weird round tube in that light… yes.  Fluorescent and failing.  Oh yeah.  Okay.  At least I know I am not nuts.  Fluorescent light?  Really?  Hmm.  That would explain why I look so dreadful in all of the pictures taken in the kitchen.  I don’t think that fluorescent lighting and freckles are a good match.

Was that worthy of recording here?  What is?  I forget 1)that I have this blog (lately) and 2) what I used to do with it.

I just replaced the flickering lighting with Christmas lights.  It doesn’t quite seem to set an appropriate mood for 9 a.m. on a Tuesday and all of the things that should be done at that time (cleaning, cutting a child’s hair), but my son has just confirmed “that is soooo much better than the flickery one that it was”.  True.  True.  Not good light for cutting hair, though.

News to share?  Hm.  I could really only talk about what my husband and I have been making of this banking crises and all of the surrounding economic issues including all of the news sites, blogs, and podcasts we get our information on or how Joe was watching Geithner on C-Span around 2 a.m.  Maybe I could talk about how I am contemplating MENDING underwear that I have owned for three years rather than taking the risk of investing in new underwear in this crap economy?  I don’t think all of that is so very interesting.

So, this is a cop-out entry as they all have been.  I am not really so in my own head these days that I can make anything witty of my days.  I can just try to remember how to share those little stupid things that I do every day that may be interesting only to me and post YouTube videos that I watched because that is what I do between trying to understand what is happening with our economy.

and what the hell is up with the wind?  I think we will stay in today.

almost march

It is raining! This makes me feel hopeful.  I feel like I can wear different clothes, take out my camera again… I don’t know… It might be Spring soon?  Spring with a big, big “S”.

I was fooled a few times this week.  I looked outside and saw the sun shining only to be met at the front door by bitter cold.  I have been working so hard at fighting my worst tendencies.  I usually fall prey to weather I don’t enjoy.  I spiral into my worse self: self pitying, slothful, depressive (and slightly obsessive) dullard.  Maybe everyone goes through that with the seasons?  I don’t know.  I have worked hard against that: daydreaming about color combinations and simplistic furniture while I clear out and clean our little hole-in-the-wall, playing with my old guitar, looking for new music and movies and books to fall in love with, forcing my child to experience things that will keep him from becoming a house zombie.

We did get outside today.  The sun was so lovely!  I mean, the wind was not too pleasant, but the sun was lovely!  I made the child march around town and look in windows with me.  We split yakitori and gyoza for lunch and had a good talk about his likes and dislikes.  A deal was struck: extra walking in exchange for movie time.  Less guilt that way?  He watched his movie while I watched “Rachel Getting Married” on my laptop with headphones (any of my entertainment is reduced to this during his waking hours).

I was pleasantly surprised by that movie, btw.   Isn’t it terrible that I am surprised when I really like a movie?  Maybe it is more terrible that my opinion of a movie can be largely influenced by musicians making cameos and Mr. Noodle (well, Bill Irwin) as nothing like Mr. Noodle.  Maybe I just thought I would hate Ann(e?) Hathaway because of the ads for that other wedding movie she was in last year.  Most likely all of the above.  I mean, if you want me to like a movie certainly have Robyn Hitchcock just standing around singing in the backyard like it is the sort of thing one would expect to see at any wedding and the guy from TV on the Radio as the groom and OMG Sister Carol just walking off of the porch singing “Natty Dread Congo”????  I am predictable that way… the sort of person you don’t want to be sitting with during a movie when Sister Carol comes out.. because I know you don’t care that I saw her years ago, etc.  You probably don’t want me to talk about Robyn Hitchcock and the memories of being 15 that I will suddenly be inspired to talk about.  I understand all of that. It is the stuff that makes my sister punch me in the arm.

I am lost in my entry now.  Oops. I no longer get sleepy, I get lost. Speaking of lost: on my way to work tonight I ended up in the middle of some sort of big police event.  I was pulled over and told to make a quick detour as the cops filled the street and I mean FILLED the street.  I don’t know why I was suddenly worried that all 6 (or more?) cars were there for me, somehow.  I can’t think of a thing in the world that they would want from me yet it seems so likely the second I see all of the blue lights.

Time to do other stuff.

tuesdays are the best sometimes

They are like my weekends in a weird way.  I am still not so up to prose-y descriptions of what I have been up to.  Lists are good.

1. I am working hard (and sort of failing at this point) on bringing an old guitar back to life.  My only goal is for it to be somewhat tune-able.  Not so easy with a warped neck.

2. This week’s episode of “Big Love” made me cry a lot.  My husband needs to catch up so I can talk to him about it.   I am currently alone in my “Big Love” appreciation.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Maybe this show hits harder for people who are ex-fundamental-ish anything?  I don’t know.

3.  My love of dub music (and many sub-genres of it) has been reborn.  Thank you to the internet and the endless amounts of stuff you can try and become obsessed with.  This is worth mentioning because there is almost no better feeling than falling in love with a new artist or finding a new combination of mp3s that makes your heart race, right? Right?

4. I had this “stomach-thing” that took me down for a solid four days.  I was completely drained!  I am back full-force.  I am!  I just don’t feel the same way about food, for some reason.

5.  Water is good.  #4 has re-affirmed that.

6.  We have no plans for today… well, my husband is at a seminar for work… but the child and I have no plans for today.

7.  Joe (the bigger) taught Joe (the smaller) to pee standing up while I was sleeping.  Is there any sort of Dad more fabulous than he?  I don’t think so.

8.  Run!  Yes! I have (other than the weak and shakey down-time) been back to running.  A 5k in September may not sound like much of a challenge to any serious runner out there but for me it is something and I am damn excited.  I am actually excited to hit that treadmill tonight.  Running is the vice I aspire to.  I have left all of my other vices behind…

9. I wish it was spring… maybe even summer. I wish I was outside this morning, reading in the sun as the boy gets to run around and play with children.  Actual children! Not the ones we make up to amuse ourselves inside all day.

10. We were making this incredible plan last night.  Before the little guy is too old to dislike us we will take road trip across the country.  Who wouldn’t love to see most of the country before they were 10?  We could even make a little family documentary.

I guess that is all that has been up with me (that is interesting enough to write about… no one really wants to know about my quest for the perfect moisturizer or how my husband was sneezing all night, right?)

Have a nice week.

some people

have been sick and have too much stuff to catch up on in one entry.  Maybe after I sleep a lot I will have some idea of how to get back to this blog thing.